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Chinese Green Tea Diet

Oct 23, 2010 | By Milo Dakota
Chinese Green Tea Diet
Photo Credit Eriko Koga/Digital Vision/Getty Images

Chinese green tea is filled with powerful antioxidants that promote mental clarity and weight loss and may protect against heart disease and some forms of cancer. If you brew it from loose leaves and drink it plain, green tea contains negligible calories and carbohydrates. If you drink diet bottled green tea, you'll still get a low-calorie beverage, but you won't enjoy as many of green tea's benefits.

Green Tea Antioxidants

Green tea contains antioxidants called epigallocatechin gallate. They are more commonly called catechins, but they are also referred to as flavonoids, polyphenols and by the abbreviation EGCG. If you see flavonoids listed on a bottle of diet green tea, be aware that the term does not necessarily refer to catechins. All catechins are flavonoids, but not all flavonoids are catechins. So a label that boasts its flavonoid content may mislead you into thinking you are getting more green tea antioxidants than you actually are, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Bottled Diet Green Tea

Bottled diet green contains few antioxidants. This is important because the amount of catechins determines the effectiveness of green tea. You get the highest number of catechins -- 127 milligrams per cup -- when you brew green tea from leaves. Some bottles of diet green tea contain 90 percent fewer catechins -- just 12 milligrams, according to the USDA. Studies linking green tea to weight loss usually include at least 300 milligrams of catechins daily. You could drink fewer than 3 cups of freshly brewed tea or 25 cups of bottled green tea to obtain 300 milligrams of catechins.

Boost to Exercise and Diet Efforts

If you are following a calorie-restricted diet and a moderate exercise program, green tea might accelerate your efforts. Kevin Maki, a U.S. researcher, compared the weight loss efforts of men who consumed 660 milligrams of green tea catechins to those of men who consumed 22 milligrams of black tea catchins. The green tea drinkers lost nearly twice as much weight as the black tea drinkers, according to the study. They also enjoyed substantially greater reductions in their waist measurements.

Clinical Study

Arpita Basu, of Oklahoma University, says the weight loss benefits associated with green tea are important and that the additional health value of green tea in warding off heart disease makes drinking and researching it worthwhile. Basu led a study in which some participants drank 4 cups of strong green tea, some took green tea capsules containing a total of 460 milligrams of catechins and some took placebos. In eight weeks, the people who drank green tea lost 5.5 pounds more than the people who took the placebo, and the people who took green tea supplements lost an extra 4.9 pounds, according to the study published in 2010 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

Comparisons

Although drinking green tea should not be considered a replacement for exercise or diet, the benefits can be compared. In Basu's study, the 5.5 pounds lost through drinking green tea would be the equivalent of giving up 19,250 calories -- about 340 a day for eight weeks. You would burn a similar amount of calories with an hour's worth of daily exercise in activities such as water aerobics, bowling, canoeing and golfing. These calculations are based on the fact that 3,500 calories equals a pound of fat.

References

Article reviewed by Mary Branham Last updated on: Oct 23, 2010

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